Nor Did We When We Resolved To
Put Down The French Revolution Think Of Such A National Debt As We
Now Owe.
These things grow by degrees, and the mind also grows in
becoming used to them; but I cannot see
That there was any moment
at which Mr. Lincoln could have stayed his hand and cried peace.
It is easy to say now that acquiescence in secession would have
been better than war, but there has been no moment when he could
have said so with any avail. It was incumbent on him to put down
rebellion, or to be put down by it. So it was with us in America
in 1776.
I do not think that we in England have quite sufficiently taken all
this into consideration. We have been in the habit of exclaiming
very loudly against the war, execrating its cruelty and
anathematizing its results, as though the cruelty were all
superfluous and the results unnecessary. But I do not remember to
have seen any statement as to what the Northern States should have
done - what they should have done, that is, as regards the South, or
when they should have done it. It seems to me that we have decided
as regards them that civil war is a very bad thing, and that
therefore civil war should be avoided. But bad things cannot
always be avoided. It is this feeling on our part that has
produced so much irritation in them against us - reproducing, of
course, irritation on our part against them. They cannot
understand that we should not wish them to be successful in putting
down a rebellion; nor can we understand why they should be
outrageous against us for standing aloof, and keeping our hands, if
it be only possible, out of the fire.
When Slidell and Mason were arrested, my opinions were not changed,
but my feelings were altered. I seemed to acknowledge to myself
that the treatment to which England had been subjected, and the
manner in which that treatment was discussed, made it necessary
that I should regard the question as it existed between England and
the States, rather than in its reference to the North and South. I
had always felt that as regarded the action of our government we
had been sans reproche; that in arranging our conduct we had
thought neither of money nor political influence, but simply of the
justice of the case - promising to abstain from all interference and
keeping that promise faithfully. It had been quite clear to me
that the men of the North, and the women also, had failed to
appreciate this, looking, as men in a quarrel always do look, for
special favor on their side. Everything that England did was
wrong. If a private merchant, at his own risk, took a cargo of
rifles to some Southern port, that act to Northern eyes was an act
of English interference - of favor shown to the South by England as
a nation; but twenty shiploads of rifles sent from England to the
North merely signified a brisk trade and a desire for profit. The
"James Adger," a Northern man-of-war, was refitted at Southampton
as a matter of course. There was no blame to England for that.
But the Nashville, belonging to the Confederates, should not have
been allowed into English waters. It was useless to speak of
neutrality. No Northerner would understand that a rebel could have
any mutual right. The South had no claim in his eyes as a
belligerent, though the North claimed all those rights which he
could only enjoy by the fact of there being a recognized war
between him and his enemy the South. The North was learning to
hate England, and day by day the feeling grew upon me that, much as
I wished to espouse the cause of the North, I should have to
espouse the cause of my own country. Then Slidell and Mason were
arrested, and I began to calculate how long I might remain in the
country. "There is no danger. We are quite right," the lawyers
said. "There are Vattel, and Puffendorff, and Stowell, and
Phillimore, and Wheaton," said the ladies. "Ambassadors are
contraband all the world over - more so than gunpowder; and if taken
in a neutral bottom," etc. I wonder why ships are always called
bottoms when spoken of with legal technicality? But neither the
lawyers nor the ladies convinced me. I know that there are matters
which will be read not in accordance with any written law, but in
accordance with the bias of the reader's mind. Such laws are made
to be strained any way. I knew how it would be. All the legal
acumen of New England declared the seizure of Slidell and Mason to
be right. The legal acumen of Old England has declared it to be
wrong; and I have no doubt that the ladies of Old England can prove
it to be wrong out of Yattel, Puffendorff, Stowell, Phillimore, and
Wheaton.
"But there's Grotius," I said, to an elderly female at New York,
who had quoted to me some half dozen writers on international law,
thinking thereby that I should trump her last card. "I've looked
into Grotius too," said she, "and as far as I can see," etc. etc.
etc. So I had to fall back again on the convictions to which
instinct and common sense had brought me. I never doubted for a
moment that those convictions would be supported by English
lawyers.
I left Boston with a sad feeling at my heart that a quarrel was
imminent between England and the States, and that any such quarrel
must be destructive to the cause of the North. I had never
believed that the States of New England and the Gulf States would
again become parts of one nation, but I had thought that the terms
of separation would be dictated by the North, and not by the South.
I had felt assured that South Carolina and the Gulf States, across
from the Atlantic to Texas, would succeed in forming themselves
into a separate confederation; but I had still hoped that Maryland,
Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri might be saved to the grander
empire of the North, and that thus a great blow to slavery might be
the consequence of this civil war.
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